‘Today I Choose To Die With Dignity’: Brittany Maynard Says Final Goodbyes And Ends Her Life

Brittany Maynard pulled the plug on herself. See the events that lead up to her decision.

A 29-year-old terminal cancer sufferer who had previously spoken of her right to die has ended her own life surrounded by her family.

According to friends and family of Brittany Maynard, she passed away in her Portland, Oregon, home after her condition worsened and the tumor took over.

However she was able to choose to die before she lost her ability to function. She completed her bucket list last week when she visited the Grand Canyon.

People.com said she wrote on Facebook : ‘Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love.

‘Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me … but would have taken so much more.’

She added: ‘The world is a beautiful place, travel has been my greatest teacher, my close friends and folks are the greatest givers. I even have a ring of support around my bed as I type.

‘Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!’

Sean Crowley, a spokesman for Compassion & Choices, said in a statement late Sunday that Maynard died Saturday ‘as she intended — peacefully in her bedroom, in the arms of her loved ones.’

Crowley said Maynard ‘suffered increasingly frequent and longer seizures, severe head and neck pain, and stroke-like symptoms. As symptoms grew more severe she chose to abbreviate the dying process by taking the aid-in-dying medication she had received months ago.’

Maynard was diagnosed with stage IV glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of terminal brain cancer and in April doctors gave her just six months to live.

She then made headlines around the world after announcing she intended to die under Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act.

‘But it will come, because I feel myself getting sicker. It’s happening each week.’

The newlywed recently managed to tick visiting the Grand Canyon off her bucket list after previously announcing that it was one place she hoped to visit before she died.

Last week she had revealed on her website that she had managed to travel from her home in Oregon to Arizona with her husband, mother and stepfather ‘thanks to the kindness of Americans around the country who came forward to make my ‘bucket list’ dream come true’.

In her latest statement, a video produced by end-of-life choice advocacy group Compassion & Choices, she acknowledges that some people have been skeptical about her story.